Thursday 15 September 2011 18.00 EDT
First published on Thursday 15 September 2011 18.00 EDT

Over the past few years I have had to explain British footballers of the past to a friend who grew up on what we used to call The Continent. To get my point across I use modified comparison: "He was kind of like Gerd Müller, only with thinner legs," I say, or: "He was a Paolo Rossi type but looked less likely to spit in your face while two of his henchmen pinned you down." Whether this helps my mate understand the wonders of Denis Law or Bernie Slaven any better I am not sure, but, as I said to him a few weeks ago after I'd attempted to satisfy his inquiry about Trevor Francis and Frank Worthington with the words "Boniek with a bad cold" and "Pub Van Basten", "at least it fills a paragraph and creates a talking point".

Last weekend my friend asked me about Tommy Lawton. I am not old enough to have seen the great England centre-forward in action. That hardly matters, though. Just as every Hungarian of a certain age claims to be a cousin of Ferenc Puskas, so every English football fan carries an image of Lawton in his head whether he saw him play, or not. He is embossed on our subconscious. He has the face of a half-forgotten uncle, with centre-parted hair and shinpads the size of sofas, and hovers permanently two feet above the ground, his head thrust forwards on a neck with all the percussive, propulsive power of Mike Tyson's right forearm.

The Everton, Chelsea and Notts Country striker was one of those players who was said to "hang in the air". Whether he could do that literally I cannot say; that he has hung in the air over English football, however, is beyond dispute. Whether we realise it or not, the quest to find a new Tommy Lawton preoccupies everybody in the English game – even those who have arrived from outside these islands, such as Sven and Don Fabio, are quickly infected with it.

Lawton led the line at a time when England's belief in its football supremacy was yet to be dented (though the Scots had already dragged a key down the gleaming bodywork more than once) and buried deep within us is the belief that all will come right with the national team if only we can uncover a replacement – a No9 with thighs the size of a pair of oven-ready geese and scar tissue plaiting his forehead, who roars down the field, defenders hanging from his torso like tin cans from a newlyweds' Mondeo and smashes the ball goalwards with such force it upends the keeper and rips the netting apart as ferociously as the Hulk does his shirts.

That is what we want, no matter hard we may deny it. How else to explain the fuss that surrounds Andy Carroll? If the Geordie was an elegant midfielder who found space as certainly as the Hubble telescope would there be this amount of attention paid to his off-the-field habits? Of course not. But he is strapping and rambunctious and good in the air, with a torso so wide it's a wonder no youngster has tagged it with graffiti. The Spanish, the Dutch, the Italians have built a complex football civilisation. We could do the same, but it is time-consuming, fiddly and expensive. How much simpler just to unleash Conan the Targetman and knock the intricate edifice of passing and movement down with a solid shoulder-to-shoulder challenge and a towering header that splinters the crossbar?

We have been here before, of course. These days the 1990 World Cup is remembered for Paul Gascoigne, yet the lead-up to the tournament was just as much about another player who had earned his place in the side with a brilliant display in the friendly with Czechoslovakia – Steve Bull. Bull wasn't as big as Carroll, but he was more bristly. Anyone who saw the Wolves juggernaut in the flesh knows what a terrific forward he was. Watching him once from the Fulwell End at Roker Park with the ball more or less at his feet, buffeting and boring his way into the penalty area, I was reminded of the kid at primary school who has prematurely hit puberty and destroys pipsqueak opponents by the sheer force of his newly coursing testosterone. Others were similarly awed. "Let's get big Bully on and see how this Franco Baresi likes a Tipton skinhead up his arse," people would say as Italia 90 approached and we grew impatient with Bobby Robson's attempts to build an England team in the image of the one he produced at Ipswich despite the fact he couldn't pick any Dutchmen.

In Italy, however, Bull was oddly subdued. He made four appearances and failed to terrorise anyone. He only got one more cap. His international career spanned a little over 18 months. Since then things have been a little quiet on the bustling front. Chris Sutton, Emile Heskey, Peter Crouch, Dean Ashton, Kevin Davies were all too skinny, too slow or too gentle to mount a charge. Alan Shearer was quite slight when he made his debut, and didn't top six foot.

And then along came Andy Carroll, to revive long-buried dreams. He is young and brimming with potential. I sincerely hope that if any overseas visitor should ask me about him a couple of decades from now I won't be saying, "Luboslav Penev with a ponytail".